Jury service # 2

Have just got back from my 2nd stint at the district court. The answer phone last night told me to report back to the court at 9.30 this morning. They were balloting for another 2 trials. This time I was in the jury assembly room and I actually got to see them do the ballot – all the names went into a brown wooden cylinder with a little door that was mounted on a stand and spun around to mix up the names, and the court official drew the names out at random one by one.

All the same people were there as Monday, minus the very old Chinese guy, people who went to the wrong floor and the 24 jurors already on a trial. Even the guy in the flannelette shirt was there, in the same shirt with almost the same bag of lunch! This time we were all treated to a very loud and opinionated guy who undertook to tell the poor person next to him all about tyres and how he used to be on the road selling them, what roads are made of, laws regarding beating people up in the UK and various other topics on which he was an expert.

There was lots more waiting around this time because the people not selected in the ballot had to wait until both juries for both trials had been selected in case they needed to come back to the larger pool again. I’m not sure why this was not the case on Monday though – as soon as the first ballot had been done, those not selected were allowed to return to work. So I spent 3.5 hours on backtoback hard airline lounge type seats, unable to lean back because of the bushy hair on the woman behind me, reading my book and a bit of the newspaper. The highlight of the morning was the little snack offered at morning tea time – packets of cameo creams – I managed to get one but did not go in for coffee out of the huge tin of Nescafe instant. So I’m off to Fuel in a sec …